Western Massachusetts retailers hope bargains will help attract big day after Christmas sales

Photo by Mark M. Murray / The RepublicanCarmen Nater, right, of Springfield, looks over a shirt she is buying with her daughters, Frances Valderrama 8, left, and Kamila Garcia 14, center, as they do some last minute Christmas shopping at Target store at the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside.

AGAWAM – The after-Christmas sale at Cooper’s, a gifts and curtain store at 161 Main St. here, is so popular that some naughty-list customers take steps to make sure the items on their wish list don’t sell before Dec. 25.

“We always find things stowed away behind shelves and under tables,” owner Kathleen M. Gourde said Friday. “So it’s our job to go around and ferret those items out so we can sell them.”

Customers are typically lined up outside Cooper’s when she opens the store at 2 p.m. each Dec. 26, Gourde said.

It promises to be that busy for most retailers Sunday, said William C. Rennie, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts in Boston. First off, the day after Christmas falls on a Sunday, which is traditionally a busy shopping day anyway.

Add in the allure of post-Christmas bargains.

“The day after (Christmas) you’ve got a certain breed of customers who like to get out there,” Rennie said. “There are usually significant deals the day after Christmas.”

And then there are all the returns of gifts that didn’t fit or missed the mark.

The National Retail Federation said last week that six out of 10 consumers request gift receipts with purchases at this time of year.

“One of the areas you have seen a trend on is with gift cards,” Rennie said. “January has been a popular month for people to redeem those gift cards.”

Day-after-Christmas shopping is a tradition for Carrie Chickering-Sears, of Deerfield, whose daughter Ashley E. Sears has her birthday Dec. 26. Being 22, Ashley usually requests gift cards, and after-Christmas sales are the perfect time to make use of them, Chickering-Sears said.

“Anytime you can find a bargain,” she said.

They plan to be at the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside, the Hampshire Mall in Hadley and downtown Northampton for a stop at Talbot’s, a women’s apparel store.

“I’m sure it will be this year, falling on a Sunday,” she said.

Business is expected to be up about 4.1 percent this holiday shopping season, compared to an admittedly weak 2009 holiday shopping season, Rennie said.

“The vast majority of our members say they’ll beat that,” Rennie said. “It’s been a very good shopping season so far.”

The National Retail Federation has revised its holiday sales forecast to an increase of 3.3 percent, or $451.5 billion nationwide, up from the original 2.3 percent expected increase.

The National Retail Federation also predicts that some people didn’t wait until after Christmas was even over to start picking up bargains. Its survey showed that 24.1 percent of respondents planed to browse the Internet to shop on Christmas Day.